Bullying, burnout, and mental health amongst portuguese nurses

Bullying is a concept commonly used to describe situations in which an individual is persistently treated in an abusive manner over a period of time, with a feeling of not being able to counterattack or defend him-or herself against the abuse. In this study we investigated both the prevalence of bullying in Portuguese nurses and the relationship between the symptoms of burnout and mental health in nurses who report being bullied. Participants were 107 nurses of the Portuguese Public Health System. We concluded that one out of six (13%) nurses had experienced bullying in the past six months. The three most common types of bullying behaviour experienced by the nurses were doing tasks below their level of competence, having areas of responsibility removed or replaced with more trivial or unpleasant tasks, and being exposed to unmanageable levels of workload. Bullied nurses had significantly higher levels of emotional exhaustion and lowered levels of mental health compared with non-bullied colleagues.